Hysterics over house prices

9:44am Thursday 15th May 2008

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THERE was an enjoyable bit of silliness in some of the national newspapers yesterday about house prices.

The excuse on this occasion was that Housing Minister Caroline Flint had been photographed carrying documents in see-through plastic. The documents were contained this way, not the minister, I should perhaps add.

Ms Flint was wearing a skirt, a green short-sleeved top and, in some of the photographs, a self-satisfied smile. Such facial arrangements are rarer on New Labour politicians these days since Tony Blair disappeared in a puff of smoke, taking his grin to pastures new and better paid.

Ms Flint's smile will probably have evaporated altogether when she saw what the newspapers had done. She had unwittingly exposed a sheet of typed notes to photographers as she entered Number 10 before a weekly cabinet session. The pictures were enlarged to reveal the contents of the plastic envelope, which were Ms Flint's notes for Tuesday's Cabinet meeting.

The visible portions of the document were pored over and it turned out they said we were all doomed. Soon the milk left on the doorstep would be worth more than the house, or something. Well, no, what the document actually said was: "Given present trends, they will clearly show sizeable falls in prices later this year - at best down five per cent - ten per cent year on year."

Somewhere in there too were the words "We can't know how bad it will get."

What admirable ingenuity was displayed by whoever thought of blowing up those photographs. That will, I suspect, be the last time the Housing Minister walks into Number Ten with her crib-sheet notes on display so transparently.

But for all that, I can't help wondering if the fuss over house prices isn't all a bit overheated, and caused by London-based publications whose employees are caught up in the bricks-and mortar game show of owning a house in the capital.

House prices go up, house prices go down - it's one of those things. In recent years, they have almost certainly gone up too much. When they were up, house owners - especially those in the south east - regaled each other with tales of how much more their house was worth at night than it had been that morning.

These notional fortunes were unrealised unless the house was sold at the right moment, but they made people feel better about themselves. Now everyone wants to feel bad about themselves, and is lashing out at anyone and everyone - especially Gordon Brown - because they are "losing" money on their houses.

If you own a house, it's nice to think it is worth so much, but it doesn't really mean anything. Rocketing house prices have also seen sections of the population secluded from the chance of ever owning a home, which seems an unfair way of ordering matters.

A fall in house prices of five or ten per cent over the year isn't all that shocking, and could surely have been foreseen by anyone with a grain or two of sense.

We are lucky enough to own a house, or the bits the mortgage company doesn't own. It's nice enough, especially after we had it made over a few years ago. As Mrs Julian On Thursday has been in a decorating mood lately, helped at times by her brush-bumbling other half, almost everything looks spick and span.

But however much it is worth this week, the garden is too small, the neighbourhood students are too noisy, and there is nowhere safe to park the car. Other than that, we like it very much, as an everyday sort of home, and not as a means of making a quick buck. A slow buck, perhaps, seeing as we have lived there for the best part of 20 years.